Sisters in battle, I am shield and blade to you. As I breathe, your enemies will know no sanctuary. While I live, your cause is mine.

There is something more powerful than any army. Something strong enough to topple kings, and even Darklings. Do you know what that thing is?”I shook my head, inching away from him.“Faith,” he breathed, his black eyes wild. “Faith.

I thought the love I'd had for him belonged to the past, to the foolish, lonely girl I never wanted to be again. I'd tried to bury that girl and the love she'd felt, just as I'd tried to bury my power. But I wouldn't make that mistake again.

Just… be careful.’I stared at her, baffled. 'Of what?’'Of powerful men.

You will be ensuring slavery and death for Grisha everywhere,” Inej said.Van Eck raised a brow. “How old are you, girl? Sixteen? Seventeen? Nations rise and fall. Markets are made and unmade. When power shifts, someone always suffers.”“When profit shifts,” Jesper shot back.Van Eck’s expression was bemused. “Aren’t they one and the same?

I am a woman alone in a powerful man’s house. I have no true allies. I will do what I must to survive.”Joran looked almost startled. “You did not want to be his whore?”The word made Nina bristle. “Is that so hard to believe?”“Commander Brum … he would never. He would not force—”“He has no need to resort to force. He prefers a different kind of submission.

You mistake me Alexandra. There is no crime in wanting these things. Only people who have never lived without comfort deride it as bourgeois.“ She winked. “The purest Marxists are always men. Calamity comes too easily to women. Our lives can come apart in a single gesture, a rogue wave. And money? Money is the rock we cling to when the current would seize us.

Power is alliance.

I was a living star. I was combustion. I was a new sun born to shatter air and eat the earth.